Tag Archives: blowouts

>Saturday, my son had one of “those” diapers. I commented to my husband that the, ahem, “deposit” (which was creeping dangerously close to the outside of the Fuzzibunz perfect size diaper) would never have been contained in a disposable diaper! It’s been a while since I used disposables, but I remember blowouts all too well!

My almost-6-year-old daughter said “what’s a disposable diaper?” I’m a little baffled by the question, since we used disposables on her brother for 4 months, and I’m pretty sure she’s seen other people change a diaper and throw it away. I’m guessing she was just confused by the term “disposable.”

In any case, I said “It’s a diaper you throw away,” and she said “Oh.” It would be pretty cool if someday we looked back at our “throw it away” generation, and didn’t understand it!

So that diaper led me to my first “dunk and swish.” In over 15 months of cloth diapering, I’ve never done that. But this diaper…let’s just say it was a little beyond scraping, but was too much to throw in the washer. I was asking myself why I hadn’t bought a diaper sprayer yet.

After I already had to reach into the potty to fish out a cloth wipe I’d accidentally dropped in, I used a tip someone gave me. I pulled the insert out, held the ends of the diaper in my hand (firmly) with the inner facing out. I dunked it in the toilet and flushed (several times.) I held onto it tightly, but let it kind of get pulled down with the flush.

It really worked quite well and wasn’t terribly gross! I was able to flip it back around with the PUL side out again and carry it to the wet bag (I need to put one in the bathroom!) without dripping.

So now I feel a little more initiated, and more like a real cloth diapering Mom. Ha ha!

>To attempt to make a long(er) story short(er), a few weeks ago, I was totally there. My son had been drinking some juice (side note: before you worry that your child’s dark urine is because of dehydration or a UTI, remember the red food coloring he managed to ingest a few days earlier.)

I was standing over the toilet, diaper in one hand, toilet paper in the other, attempting to scrape the massive, ahem, deposit off of the diaper. Just for a second, my eyes glazed over, and I drifted away…

I was spinning through a field of daisies, pack of disposables in my arms, “So Happy Together” playing in the background. With a smug smile on my face, I tossed the offending diaper in the pail.

Then, the record screeched, and I remembered what it was really like to use disposables. Remember that we used disposable diapers/pull-ups on my daughter for almost 2 1/2 years, and on my son for about 4 months. The terms “fitteds and pockets and snappis” weren’t in my diaper vocabulary, but “blowout” sure was.

We have one single photo of my daughter in her cute baptism gown, and in the photo, my husband is holding her with a horrified look on his face, since the blowout was in process at that very moment. Even when the diapers were on properly, and in the proper size, blowouts were a regular occurrence.

Much of the time, it came right out the back of the diaper, while the diaper itself remained relatively unscathed. I looked down at the diaper in my hand, covered with poop from front to back and side to side, nearly to the edges of the elastic and I knew. I knew there was no way this would have stayed in a disposable diaper.

I may be scraping and washing this diaper, but if it had been a disposable, I would instead be washing a shirt, pants, socks, probably my clothing, any surface nearby, the changing pad, and quite possibly, giving the kid a bath. I saw a post in the cafemom babies group where a Mom cut a onesie off of her daughter after a blowout, knowing there was no way to get it off of her without making a bigger mess!

With cloth, I had one incident where I didn’t have the diaper snug around his leg and breastfed baby poop came out of the leg gap, but other than that, no blowouts. So, yeah. I gladly washed that diaper! I think having used disposables in the past makes me appreciate cloth more!

Aside from the occasional horrifying story of the forgotten poopy cloth diaper that was beyond saving, have you ever wished you could pitch a diaper?

Maria wants to live in a world where cloth diapers are the norm and moms can make parenting choices without judgement. When she’s not chasing her 13, 9 and 6-year old kids around, you might find her checking out the latest gadgets, organizing something (again) or exercising in the fresh air. Read More »